Architettura e Illuminismo: aspetti del pensiero di Ètienne-Louis Boullèe.

The article presents a representation of the city in late eighteenth-century French culture. Through the analysis of the thought of two end-of-century architects, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Étienne-Louis Boullée, the author proposes two particular urban views, both inspired by the concrete desire for radical transformation and empirical aesthetically and conceptually post-materialist philosophy. Criticism of the city, utopian literature, artistic and architectural debates, shape a framework within which Ledoux and Boullée fit, offering the possibility of rethinking urban space, its meaning and its profoundly innovative civic responsibility.